The Climate Change Climate Change - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124597505076157449.html <comment><USER2> Here's my beef: I feel it's almost impossible to find (fairly) objective information about climate change and then make my own, informed, decision.

Part of this problem stems from the fact I'm a christian and conservative in ways ... yet, at the same time, the environment and stewardship are important to me. Regardless, I'm not going to take a stand on climate change/global warming simply because someone on the left or right says I need to.

How does one find information on climate change that _isn't_ politically motivated?

<comment><USER3> I think most of the actual _science_ is pretty good. It's when people start talking about what should be done about global warming that things get dicey.

<comment><USER4> Mod parent up.

This is why Bjorn Lomborg is reviled: not because he doubts that anthropogenic global warming is for real, but because he has the temerity to suggest that the cure (spending a kajillion dollars to achieve relatively small changes in climate) may be worse than the disease. See [http://www.ted.com/talks/bjorn_lomborg_sets_global_prioritie...](http://www.ted.com/talks/bjorn_lomborg_sets_global_priorities.html).

And dancing about, declaring that the science is settled, and claiming to know the One True Solution to something as inherently complex as climate is indicative of failure to understand the science, which leads to politically motivated footballs like this: [http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/06/25/source- inside-epa-conf...](http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/06/25/source-inside-epa- confirms-claims-of-science-being-ignored-by-top-epa-management/)

<comment><USER5> I personally disklike him because in his speeches (like the TED one) he seemed to make a lot of strawman arguments - like dwelling on "heat deaths being a non-issue" when really I don't think it ever was an issue.

<comment><USER6> In 2003 in Europe roughly 35.000 people died from heat. That is not an issue?

<comment><USER5> Sure, but I don't think fear of an increase of heat deaths was an major concern in the climate debate. At least I never heard about it before the Lomborg talk. And I think he made it clear (if he is to believed), that heat deaths indeed are not a thing to worry about with climate change.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Regardless of whether you believe global warming is real or bullshit, isn't there a geo-political argument to be made that we should simply be using less oil and trying to become more efficient so we don't continue to prop up monarchies and radical theocracies in the Middle East who are wholly funded by their oil businesses?

<comment><USER4> This is a geo-politically complex situation. Assume this program was wildly successful. All of a sudden Saudi Arabia is destitute; Venezuela is broke; Russia is impoverished; Mexico is crippled; Nigeria is even poorer than it is now. Has the overall geopolitical environment gotten any better? Or do you now just have a bunch of very unstable countries, some of whom have WMDs?

<comment><USER8> Well, how about we take some of the $700 billion a year that we would suddenly /not/ be sending overseas to Russia, Latin America and the Middle East to build schools, hospitals, libraries in the hardest hit countries? Increasing efficiency _always_ has the potential to leave everyone better off. Econ 101. What you choose to do with the extra money left on the table is up to you, but you should never pass up the chance to do better simply because of inertia.

<comment><USER4> TANSTAAFL.

We don't just punt money into Russia, Saudi Arabia, etc -- we exchange it for oil which we then use productively. By definition, if we didn't want the oil more than the money (or anything else we could get for that money) we wouldn't make the deal. How does it increase the total efficiency to coerce people into spending money on X instead of Y if when they have their druthers they clearly prefer Y?

You can make the argument that we are in a sort of local maximum and that in the long run, tolerating this inefficiency is worthwhile because it would lead to the changing of the surface such that we can find an even better maximum. Could be. All I'm saying is that it's complex and monolithic technocratic solutions are doomed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> As a scientist in a previous life, I love Michael Crichton's idea that there should be strict separation between the people that collect the data and the people that analyze & interpret the data for politically charged areas of science. Both would operate from independent institutes, funded by all stakeholders. If you let me collect and analyze my own data, I am open to all sorts of influence depending on who is funding my work, peer pressure, etc. Once the data has been collected, then the analysis portion could even be split tested, with two independent groups funded to do the analysis independently on exactly the same data set, and then we can compare truly independent conclusions.

The other problem that pervades climate change is the shockingly bad statistical analysis. At the least, there should be a separate statistical institute that can put its stamp of approval on the statistical parts of the results. With such limited historical climate data older than a very recent period, and projections made far into the future, we must ensure that only the very best statistical analyses make it into the public awareness. Alas, climate researchers are often not at the leading edge of statistics.

</comment><comment><USER6> [..] today only 11% of the population believes humans play a role.

Is this a bad joke?! Believe?! What has believe to do with this?

Please if you don't know - watch this talk from Prof. Stefan Rahmstorf ( <http://www.pik-potsdam.de/~stefan/> )

Video H264 720x576 Encoded [http://dewy.fem.tu- ilmenau.de/CCC/25C3/video_h264_720x576/25...](http://dewy.fem.tu- ilmenau.de/CCC/25C3/video_h264_720x576/25c3-2863-en-climate_change_- _state_of_the_science.mp4) (From 12/2008, CCC Congress 25C3)

Information and further links about this talk: [http://events.ccc.de/congress/2008/Fahrplan/events/2863.en.h...](http://events.ccc.de/congress/2008/Fahrplan/events/2863.en.html)

His job is to give scientific advice to people who need to make decisions on these Global Warming topics.

Global warming will destroy the sea, the animals, plants and finally us. Stop this whole argument of is this real or bullshit and read the research for yourself if you still doubt it.

Who needs money when we all can't go outside anymore because its 50 degrees Celsius outside?

<comment><USER10> If you say something and claim it to be factual it's still up to me to believe you or not. I think belief has a lot to do with it.

<comment><USER6> Thats the beauty of the argument. Science gives us a tool to eliminate believe from the equation. Believe is something which has no place there.

With Science we make assumptions and lay them out for everybody to see or counter argument. After enough iterations of opinions and results we end up with something that gives us at least a high probability of being right.

Claim has to be followed by proof. Proof does not need believe as it stands by itself. If you believe it or not.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Surely any half-decent government should be able to find some scientists it can trust? I don't think this issue should be decided by "number of believers" vs "number of non-believers".

<comment><USER11> Sorry for a cynical answer, but your comment assumes that there are any governments that believe it's important for them to be trustworthy. I certainly don't get that feeling here in America, on either side of the aisle.

<comment><USER5> Not the government, the scientists. Assuming that the government wants to make the right decision about climate protection. But you are right - that is probably too much to assume. Realistically they will only worry about reelection.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> WTF? This is the second OPINION piece that's been posted today. Don't upvote this crap!</comment>


Startup Makes Batteries That Charge in 30 Seconds - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2015-09/25/storedot-molecules-will-change-technology <comment><AUTHOR> [http://www.store-dot.com/#!flashbattery-for-electric- vehicle...](http://www.store-dot.com/#!flashbattery-for-electric-vehicle/c4s6)</comment>


Apple And Google Agree To Drop All Lawsuits Against Each Other - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-and-samsung-agree-to-drop-all-lawsuits-against-each-other-2014-5

<comment><AUTHOR> Also notice the URL "/apple-and- _samsung_ -agree-to-drop-all-lawsuits- against-each-other-2014-5".

Quotes from one of the commenters on the article:

> Did you just change your title from Samsung to Google?

> that's a big mistake if you cannot tell Motorola Mobility from Samsung!!!

</comment><comment><USER2> Further, Motorola is no longer part of Google. So, who is agreeing with whom? and who continues to sue whom?</comment>


Verified Programming of Turing Machines in Coq (2020) - <AUTHOR> https://popl20.sigplan.org/details/CPP-2020-papers/6/Verified-Programming-of-Turing-Machines-in-Coq <comment><AUTHOR> I was recently reading into Total Functional Programming [1] and found it surprising that it seems possible to reason about/model Turing Machines in languages which guarantee a program's termination [2]. I've barely scratched the surface, but I feel like it's a fun combination of engineering and theoretical/philosophical issues. I'd super appreciate and fellow HNers suggestions for related resources or things to read.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_functional_programming](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_functional_programming)

[2] [https://kseo.github.io/posts/2015-06-18-total-functional- pro...](https://kseo.github.io/posts/2015-06-18-total-functional- programming.html)</comment>


How Silicon Valley Nonprofits Lure Tech Donors - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/07/how-silicon-valley-has-disrupted-philanthropy/565997/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> I love the premise behind data driven giving, but it's really hard. In tech, we are all used to running experiments to determine whether things really work. But experimental design is not trivial and really benefits from expensive specialists. Bad analysis and experimental design has many silent failure modes in both the false positive and false negative directions. I have to imagine that these reports that OP talks about charities sending their donors are full of broken methodology. "We caused 10k kids to graduate high school!" when 9990 would have graduated anyways.

If anyone knows of a way for a charitably minded data scientist to donate time and expertise, I'd love to hear about it.

</comment><comment><USER3> A much more interesting article by the Atlantic on this same topic [https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/03/the- pro...](https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/03/the-problem-with- philanthropy/520989/)

</comment><comment><USER4> > He started adding on educational and vocational training programs to prepare > kids to work in Silicon Valley

> Donors often give to causes they have a personal connection to

> ...recommends not talking about "charity" and meeting immediate community > needs

> Groups like food banks, for instance, which provide an essential emergency > service to low-income people, aren't exactly disrupting poverty

I'm cherry-picking but this article paints a concerning picture for the future of corporate philanthropy. I couldn't stretch laffy taffy as far as you'd need to stretch the word philanthropy to include offering job training for work you need workers for.

</comment><comment><USER5> For me, philanthropy is about money, cooperation and identification and selection of causes. Has Silicon Valley helped in those areas to improve philanthropy?

<comment><USER6> those may well constitute philanthropy, but there is a hierarchy of organizations who have the same values on this tuple and execute with greater or lesser efficiency.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Based on my experience working on and building tech/human rights related NGO startups from scratch. One of the problems is also that there is shift in philanthropy, in particular towards slightly safer, less controversial (but still worthy) issues.

For example, very few tech donors will touch some of the hard human rights related issues, as they feel it will court controversy or affect their businesses. In the current political climate, it is more important than ever that the future tech version of George Soros emerges. E.g someone who is willing to fund movements and organisations that are willing to fight for the spread of the liberal human rights focused international order.

Another issue that the nonprofit sector really lacks the dynamism of the startup space. There are a significant amount of bloated large NGOs that no longer fulfil their mission effectively and/or at a proper cost model. The effect is tricky as these end up hoovering up funding, even though many are often de facto zombies when it comes to their mission. If they were commercial businesses, many of these would already have been allowed to die, however their large scale and name recognition allows them to access traditional, safe funders.

This effectively blocks out newer, smaller leaner ideas, organisations etc. The concepts of mergers, acquihires takeovers are fairly alien to the nonprofit space. Also many nonprofit startups are trapped by things such as the outlay, funding and costs of applying are very very high (esp compared to the returns in many cases) and many traditional funders have strange stipulations whereby they won't fund organisations unless they are 3-5 years old...Imagine a VC in the Valley saying that!

</comment><comment><USER8> With the Elon musk submarine story all I kept thinking throughout is that he's a billionaire and if he really wants to help people so much give money to people who need it. Charities actually know what to do with it and are far more effective than clumsily trying to do it directly.

Out of everything this is what bothered me most because he really can help people and there is already a clear way to do it for someone with his means.

<comment><USER9> > Charities actually know what to do with it and are far more effective than > clumsily trying to do it directly.

What gives you so much faith in charities?

What do charities know about being efficient that other people don't? Why would they be the only ones with good ideas?

Being a charity is just a way to set up an organisation. Having that status doesn't inherently make you a force for good.

<comment><USER10> "What gives you so much faith in charities?"

What gives you so much faith in a random person who happens to have money?

"What do charities know about being efficient that other people don't?"

Most of those people have been working with the problem that the charity is tackling a lot longer than some random rich person. Seriously, this statement sounds so much like the, "What makes you think that people who have actually studied the issues know about those issues" sentiment that is going around in the political sphere, and not in a good way.

"Having that status doesn't inherently make you a force for good."

Neither does being a billionaire.

<comment><USER9> I'm not claiming to have faith in anyone.

I'm saying if I was the billionaire and someone criticised me for using my money directly rather than giving to the charity I'd ask how does that person know the charity is better than me. It seems like people are just seeing the label 'charity' and are thinking it's undeniable that the charity have any idea what they're doing themselves.

What causes do you support? If I set up a charity for those causes, took a cut for my salary and distributed the rest of the money as I saw fit, would you give your money to me instead of carrying on as you see fit? But I'm a charity and you're not!

<comment><USER10> Your entire argument boils down to "billionaires know better because they're billionaires." You completely ignore the whole, "Working on the problem for far longer" part, and assume that charities themselves are an appeal to authority. You're not discussing things in good faith.

<comment><USER9> > Your entire argument boils down to "billionaires know better because they're > billionaires."

There's nothing in what I've said whatsoever to support this. You've completely imagined that.

What I've said is that I don't think charities know better simply because they're charities. You've sort of transposed that to the opposite side of the argument and are making out that I said another argument, which is 'billionaires know better'.

'I don't think A always knows any better' does not mean 'I think B knows better'.

> assume that charities themselves are an appeal to authority

I do think charities are in general a bit of an appeal to authority. People just say 'charity' and everyone assumes it must be a worthwhile cause and people doing the right thing.

Just because you are have the magic sticker of being a charity does not mean:

\- you have worked on a problem for a long time

\- if you have been working on a problem for a long time, then that you have made any progress

\- that you even understand the problem better than someone else does

\- you are working more efficiently than someone else could

\- that you are doing anything useful whatsoever

> You're not discussing things in good faith.

Well you're claiming I said "billionaires know better because they're billionaires" which I really think you'd struggle to back up with anything I've said, so neither are you.

It baffles me that people say 'give it to charity instead'. You might as well say 'give it to anyone who can fill in IRS Form 1023', because that's all you're guaranteed to get from a charity.

<comment><USER10> "There's nothing in what I've said whatsoever to support this. You've completely imagined that."

No. Your entire rant where you mention people who can fill out an IRS form clearly shows that you are not arguing in good faith. You are assuming that we're saying any charity is good, which, if you were listening, no one ever said. Once again, the entire thrust of your argument is, "What makes people who have actually studied things, people who are actually involved with the problem they're trying to solve, think they know more than me, a rich person who's read something on Twitter?"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Yes, exactly what we need charities to optimize for: short term returns.</comment>


Show HN: Final Fantasy VIII running on Vulkan, Steam compatibility and much more - <AUTHOR> https://blog.julianxhokaxhiu.com/2020-03-06-final-fantasy-viii-running-on-vulkan/ <comment><USER2> Whoa, that's really cool. I didn't realize ff8 had such issues, since 7 and 9 have gotten such modern treatment.

Does 8 not support steam workshop? It'd be really interesting to combine this various mods to improve the overall QOL, like the ff7 mod (Ultima?) did with all the visual aspects of the game. Is this doable here?</comment>


Long Live WebGL (2013) - <AUTHOR> https://nullprogram.com/blog/2013/06/10/ <comment><USER2> > This is because OpenGL is at its essence a 2D API.

I know @greggman has made this argument strongly and repeatedly. He's not wrong, and he's definitely an authority on the subject, he's done amazing, amazing things for WebGL. But I keep bumping into this argument and I find the strict insistence on the 2d part exceeding the argument's usefulness.

It's useful to know that you're on your own to handle projections and matrices. They aren't built-in to the fixed function pipeline the way they used to be. It's useful to be able to think of WebGL as a rasterization engine, and it's useful to understand how the pieces fit together.

It's not useful to claim that WebGL isn't 3d at all ever, or to stick firmly to that interpretation. WebGL does have support for 3d coordinates, 3d textures, 3d matrices, and it's main function is to present 3d graphics. Say what you want about having to roll your own transforms, there is absolutely 3d support and 3d intent designed into WebGL.

If you really want to insist that WebGL is a 2d API only, then get the Khronos Group to say that. Currently the WebGL page says: "WebGL is a cross-platform, royalty-free web standard for a low-level 3D graphics API based on OpenGL ES, exposed to ECMAScript via the HTML5 Canvas element." Appeal to them to change the wording to 2d. As long as Khronos calls it 3d, then it's 3d. Trying to convince people otherwise on the internet can never work.

<comment><USER3> After working with OpenGL for many years and then moving to higher-level systems more recently (e.g. three.js), I found a useful way of viewing the 'essence' of the API: moving data around. It's not so much a '3D graphics API' as it is a wrapper for interacting with a a GPU.

(A notable exception is shader code, which is largely doing custom geometric or pixel transformations. But the rest of it is pretty much an API for moving blocks of data in and out of the GPU.)

I think this is important to know, because the common perception is that OpenGL, as an API for creating 3D graphics, would give you primitives for talking about 3D objects/spaces—which for the most part it doesn't, aside from essentially utility classes (e.g. vectors/matrices for working with 3D spaces). In consideration of that, it's a pretty awful experience if you're interested in describing 3D scenes, as opposed to developing new rendering techniques or optimizing old ones or whatever.

So instead, it's an API well-suited to building actual 3D graphics APIs on top—scene graphs, game engines, etc. My understanding is that Vulkan/Metal take this to a further extreme, and I see it commonly mentioned in that context—but it's true of OpenGL too!

It should be more common to warn beginners: learn OpenGL so that you can understand the underpinnings of some other system you will eventually use to describe 3D graphics—but this isn't the endpoint, don't build all your games or whatever directly on OpenGL. You will have _so_ much more fun with a good scene graph.

<comment><USER4> > It's not so much a '3D graphics API' as it is a wrapper for interacting with > a a GPU.

Mandatory link to Zed Shaw's blog post on the difference between an 'indirection layer' and an 'abstraction layer'.

 _Abstraction is used to reduce complexity. Indirection is used to reduce coupling or dependence._

* [https://zedshaw.com/archive/indirection-is-not-abstraction/](https://zedshaw.com/archive/indirection-is-not-abstraction/)

<comment><USER3> Hmm, but I didn't say it was an indirection layer nor an abstraction layer...

<comment><USER4> If I'm understanding you and Zed correctly, you pretty much did, you just didn't use Zed's terminology.

As you say, the intent of modern graphics APIs like Vulkan _isn 't_ to spare the graphics programmer the hard work of writing low-level code. Instead the intent is to provide a minimal indirection layer which does just enough work to let graphics code work on any vendor's hardware, whilst preserving the graphics programmer's ability to do low-level cleverness.

So game-engines and scenegraph systems are in the business of abstraction, but graphics APIs are in the business of indirection.

<comment><USER3> Okay, I see your point. _But_ indirection only enters the picture once you introduce the possibility of _multiple_ graphics cards which are being communicated with the same API—and I agree, that is an example of indirection.

However, it's not the role I was attempting to highlight. I was considering the role of OpenGL/WebGL in relation to a single graphics card: if you consider that situation, the API is still necessary and what it's doing is neither (much) abstraction nor indirection. Instead, it's main task is essentially conversion: the graphics card needs data in one format, javascript programs assemble their data in another (I'm using data very loosely here; I mean to include even the program source, since it's in a 'format' we can just give directly to a GPU).

That said, even something like Vulkan does abstract a bit, and once you bring in the possibility of multiple cards, the value of its role as an indirection layer becomes clear.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> No, WebGL is not a 2D API. Neither is its predecessor, OpenGL. This comment from the article is particularly misleading.

> OpenGL is at its essence a 2D API. The vertex shader accepts something as > input and it produces 2D vertices in device coordinates (-1 to 1) as output.

This, and some of the comments in this thread, perhaps stem from a misunderstanding of the projection matrices. The projection that you do yourself is a projection from a large, arbitrary, 3D space to a small 3D space where x, y, _and z_ are restricted to [-1, 1]. These are the device coordinates ([http://www.vizitsolutions.com/portfolio/webgl/normalizedDevi...](http://www.vizitsolutions.com/portfolio/webgl/normalizedDeviceCoordinates.html)). The hardware is very good at projecting this small 3D space onto the screen.

Indeed, it is possible to write a 3D program entirely within the device coordinates. This example draws two triangles, without any projection, where one is clearly behind the other. [http://www.vizitsolutions.com/portfolio/webgl/translationMat...](http://www.vizitsolutions.com/portfolio/webgl/translationMatrix.html) Drag the slider to see one triangle move behind the other.

Even this is a simplified explanation. There are a lot more details here, including all the math: [http://www.songho.ca/opengl/gl_projectionmatrix.html](http://www.songho.ca/opengl/gl_projectionmatrix.html) This shows why the output from a vertex shader, gl_position, is a vec4. It is definitely not a 2D value.

That said, yes, WebGL is great :)

<comment><USER6> I think the point was that the OpenGL framebuffer is ultimately a 2D space. Whatever your input data and computation model, at the end of the data the output from your computation goes into a set of arrays with two index coordinates. That's a fairly specious point, maybe, but it's not wrong.

<comment><USER7> But surely since the memory that the frame buffer is encoded into is 1D, OpenGL is really one-dimensional. /s

Sure, the frame buffer is 2D in the end - it has to be, in order to display on a standard computer monitor - but surely the fact that OpenGL is able to natively handle point data as 3D-homogeneous coordinates, and support for techniques like depth buffering out of the box counts for more than any argument that only really amounts to "after it is finished doing all its work you just have a 2D image".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Is WebGL here to stay? As Apple deprecated OpenGL...

<comment><USER9> WebGL is already implemented on top of DirectX on Windows using ANGLE: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANGLE_(software)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANGLE_\(software\))

As a result, operating system support isn't really relevant to browser support, since ANGLE will eventually be able to target metal or vulkan on Mac os

<comment><USER8> What about OpenGL? Is it worth learning now?

<comment><USER10> Yes! I'd suggest learning OpenGL, then Metal, then Vulkan/DX12, which is how I'd rank them from high to low level.

<comment><USER8> I'd prefer to stay at OpenGL level. Maybe some kind of standardized high-level API pops up on top of Vulkan/Metal, for those who don't want to go that low- level.

<comment><USER10> Metal is actually not that bad to live in. Vulkan, on the other hand, is micromanagement hell. I definitely agree with the people saying that it's for "building your own OpenGL".

<comment><USER11> Worse, because they took the extensions concept and took them a step further.

Every couple of weeks there is a new version, and each card supports a certain minor version.

[https://vulkan.gpuinfo.org](https://vulkan.gpuinfo.org)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I have not used OpenGL much and don't know if you can actually output 2D device coordinates, but I am sure it supports the same format the hardware uses natively - 4D device coordinates.

With the 4D device coords it can do things, which make no sense in 2D: clipping against view frustum (e.g. how do you clip against the front plane in 2D?) and perspective mapping.</comment>


Google admits citing 4chan to spread fake Vegas shooter news - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/10/google-admits-citing-4chan-to-spread-fake-vegas-shooter-news/ <comment><USER2> _> We are working to fix the issue that allowed this to happen_

This is not some issue that you can fix. This is not some color being off, or some chat message appearing out of order. This is about AI in its continued infancy that's now being actively and maliciously targeted.

It's also about a huge responsibility of the worlds two greatest media outlets that both think they can have machines do a humans job and miserably failing at it.

Some users unable to log in? That's an "issue" you "fix".

Bringing the world closest it has been to the brink of a world war in the last 30 years, that's the point where you step back and f'ing take responsibility for your actions and start rethinking your approach.

Sorry for the harsh words. I'm probably overreacting.

<comment><USER3> You are understating and giving a pass for the real issue at hand - a lack of ability to think critically by a large portion of our population. Let's assume for argument's sake that Google News and Facebook shut down their feeds tomorrow - can you tell me with confidence that another one won't mushroom up and take its place or that people won't switch to "dark" networks - Whatsapp, Messenger, Email and what not?

I'm not absolving Google and Facebook. There are more trustworthy places to get your news and information. Why do you think people flock to less reliable sources? Unless that's solved, democracy and with it culture and progress as we know it is destined to be doomed.

<comment><USER4> Lesson to be learned:

Wisdom and knowledge do not come from technology. They come from wise and experienced educators working one-on-one with their students, not to tell them the truth, but to help them experience the truth. Nullius in verba!

Ed-tech is confidence game.

What technology offers is the productive capacity to support a world filled with actual human educators and actual human intelligence.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I am amazed at how bad this situation is.

> Something happens.

> /pol/, being /pol/, flipped the switch that generates semi-random > information around a subject, seasoned with bias-of-the-day

> some posters on /pol/ decide to blame Geary Danley for the Vegas shooting

> google indexes /pol/

Given that:

> Searches for _words_ yield content related to _words_

> Searches for a name yield content related to a name

> Searches for "Geary Danley" yield content related to "Geary Danley"

This ensues:

> Media shitstorm because google is "citing 4chan to spread fake Vegas shooter > news"

This only happens because:

1) We are expecting google to feed us only the truth? Otherwise we would say "someone took google seriously and arrived to the wrong conclusions"

2) We don't care the slightest what URL we follow from google? Otherwise we would say "someone who doesn't know what /pol/ is is taking it seriously"

3) We find it easier to blame some conspiracy than to take a step back and think? We ascribe blame to google.

4) All of the above?

I feel I am living in some bizarro world where everyone's feelings and expectations must be met, and any deviation from this will result in riots and name calling[0].

Few things exist to serve your purposes. Think before using any tool. You wouldn't use a blowtorch to trim your nails.

[0] [https://phys.org/news/2011-11-poop-throwing-chimps- intellige...](https://phys.org/news/2011-11-poop-throwing-chimps- intelligence.html)

<comment><USER6> It's weird that people are blaming a _search engine_ for providing relative links for discussion on a topic. Again, it's a _search engine_ first and foremost, not a _media outlet_. It _indexes_ media outlets.

It shouldn't be Google's job to vet articles. That should fall on the end user, and this push to hide "fake news" is just asking for more problems down the road.

<comment><USER7> Exactly, what happens when a credible news source has to _retract_ a need story?

Do we crucify Google for surfacing an expost facto false story?

It's not Google's job to verify sources of news. Could they algorithmically "guess" a credibility score and attach that to the newslink, sure, I suppose.

<comment><USER8> > Could they algorithmically "guess" a credibility score and attach that to > the newslink, sure, I suppose.

Then why bother with other sources? Just generate a random summary based on the search terms, rank it, and present it to the user if it is credible enough. Repeat as necessary.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I don't know whether these automated news aggregators rely on machine learning per se, but this kind of reminds me of recent ML fails like Microsoft's Tay bot turning into a Nazi, or Google Photos labeling black people as gorillas.

Andrew Ng interviewed Ian Goodfellow in the first course of his deep learning specialization on Coursera. Ian said that he's really interested in machine learning security, in part guarding against untrusted or adversarial inputs.

Whether they're poisoning your network in the first place, or your network is misclassifying them because they're too weird, it seems like you need to treat random inputs as potentially adversarial.

<comment><USER10> Part of the problem is that there's no quality control in AI or ML. "Good enough to show the investors" is the benchmark.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I really don't like the "fact checks" being done by news sites these days - that's your responsibility as a reader, tech can't do it for you.

Even more reputable sites like Snopes tend to draw absolutist conclusions about things which I find are certainly not absolute.

<comment><USER12> > that's your responsibility as a reader

I live in Sweden. How do I fact check what happens in a neighborhood in the USA? How do I know that a result of a clinical test is reliable?

Do I check it on another on-line source? Do I spend millions on R&D and do my own analysis? Or just few thousands going to Las Vegas and gathering my own data? Or do I need to wait for a Newspaper that actually has fact-checking?

> Even more reputable sites like Snopes tend to draw absolutist conclusions > about things which I find are certainly not absolute.

Billions of citizens fact-checking every single news is not cost effective. It will be good to have a minimum of quality, and then you can apply any correction to the inherent bias of that medium. There is a difference between someway biased information and bullshit.

<comment><USER13> > I live in Sweden. How do I fact check what happens in a neighborhood in the > USA?

I question the utility of you having any opinion on US politics, especially at the local level. You are certainly entitled to one but I don't know what it gets you without a vote.

<comment><USER14> Well you've assumed they don't have a vote. US citizens are entitled to a vote while living abroad.

[https://travel.state.gov/content/passports/en/abroad/legal-m...](https://travel.state.gov/content/passports/en/abroad/legal- matters/benefits/voting.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> There's a recurring theme in this thread :

> [insert internet company here] did nothing wrong! It's the reader's > responsibility to think critically!

Obviously, there's a lot of truth to that. I'm sure everyone here broadly agrees with the concept of personal responsibility. I just don't see how making this blatantly obvious point gets us anywhere. It's like working with a bad colleague who management won't fire. Of course they're failing at their duties, but so what? You're stuck with them. It seems weirdly nihilistic to just accept the situation, instead of trying to improve it by making the colleague suck less.

Personally, I think it's OK to trust experts. We broadly trust doctors, engineers, researchers and lawyers to inform us about their specific fields. Journalism is different, in part because of the 1st amendment : the government can regulate who's qualified to give you legal advice, but not who's qualified to inform you about geopolitics. That's a feature, with some undesirable side effects. My contention is that curated fact checking is an acceptable, if imperfect, way to mitigate those side effects. Everyone's entitled to an opinion, but not every opinion is entitled to the front page of Google.

</comment><comment><USER16> I mean, I'm all for Google deciding that in the interests of pluralism and avoiding partisanship in its filtering it can't rule out Breitbart, political blogs or even Infowars as news sources, but including a web forum which - quite apart from being an infamous cesspool - doesn't even pretend to be a news source in Google News results?!

<comment><USER17> Indeed, this is the problem. If their algorithm is so naive that it accepts _frickin ' 4chan_, it's probably going to end up making the wrong decision in the other direction (that a reliable thing is not).

<comment><USER18> Yes, this this this.

If they can't just rule out an image board famous for trolling, why should I buy all these stories about ai, machine learning and all the buzzwords.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Ultimately, the issue is whether we allow freedom of speech or not (or suppressing it severely). Tech is becoming political now, it's going to end up regulated and meaningful advancements will be rare, as they will risk "rocking the boat". That is going to be the most likely result when all major tech companies bow down to "filtering", "censoring", "suppressing" unpopular opinion. Automation would in infinite limit allow perfect control; now the question is are we going to build a society for automatons, i.e. allow only predefined human interactions, or for actual humans? Freedom always brings horrible things with it, but also greatness not possible in restrictive societies.

<comment><USER20> A distinction needs to be made between the Googles and Facebooks of the world, and "tech". In practice, huge corporations love it when they can serve as a proxy for a human rights issue like freedom of speech. But there is no reason that mega-corporations with unimaginable power and increasingly control of the world's information should have the same freedoms that we allow individuals or even smaller companies. To the contrary, they need government checks and balances because there is no other counter-balancing force to their power. Over the last 100 years or so American culture has been totally subverted to this idea that any restrictions on corporate activity are inherently fascist and will destroy our economy, and the only solution to overwhelming market dominance is deregulation and magical thinking about the efficacy of the free market.

<comment><USER19> I think the distinction here is not about limiting corporations but about basic human issue of freedom (more specifically of "feeling of freedom"; unlimited freedom is out of reach even for the richest/most powerful humans). As official media are losing their raison d'être, i.e. medial control of population due to alternatives provided by self-inhibited freedom on the Internet, allowing all kinds of ridiculous information to pop up, the usual approach is to inhibit access to unapproved information sources, reinforcing the feeling of having one's freedom attacked via censorship. Word of mouth was always ridiculous, a sewer with a few pearls here and there, it was always there though... Obviously, corporations in favor of "feeling of freedom" would lose a lot where it matters, in popularity. To me it seems like the quality of "story tellers", conjuring believable lies as was the case in the past, went dramatically down and population overcame that paradigm and can't be fooled with them anymore. Trying to shove population back to ancient approaches won't work; new, smarter stories need to be invented for people to believe in. Anyone up to the task?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> One thing I was thinking about was how to leverage Open Graph share details for less than reputable sites. If scammy sites lost the ability to have an image/description attached to share, wouldn't that be a powerful way to show maybe a link isn't reputable?

So many fake news sites are using high quality stock images fo OG share, and we are more or less conditioned to believe a headline with a high quality image attached, right?

</comment><comment><USER22> This is a problem as old as time. Just because you can find the Enquirer on the same rack as the New York Times doesn't mean they're equally valid news sources. Just read the material and decide for yourself. It's especially easy for sites like 4chan which publicly avow that all posts are "artistic works of fiction and falsehood".

</comment><comment><USER23> In an unrelated note, Christopher Poole, the founder of 4chan began working for Google in 2016.

</comment><comment><USER24> Google do not suprise me anymore.. its sad that we have greedy companies like google existing..</comment>


How I got 10,000 five-star reviews in 4 weeks - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@warpling/how-i-got-10-000-five-star-reviews-in-4-weeks-5246cc4c55c7#.4ptbbv1yq <comment><USER2> Thanks WoodenChair, almost missed this post! XD

To anyone that wants to download Blackbox (free) here is a link: [https://bnc.lt/kcvd/JtDZ8aZ9xs](https://bnc.lt/kcvd/JtDZ8aZ9xs)

Warning: if you like most fast-twitch iPhone games this one isn't for you!</comment>


Most cancers due to 'bad luck'? Not so fast, says study - <AUTHOR> http://www.statnews.com/2015/12/16/cancers-bad-luck/ <comment><AUTHOR> Here's a link [1] to the full text of the new paper in Nature, discusses in this article. [http://rdcu.be/fZHC](http://rdcu.be/fZHC)

[1] ReadCube is a service provided by Nature to allow full-text sharing of their articles by subscribers.</comment>


Amazon Kindle for PC Beta Launched - <AUTHOR> http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html/ref=amb_link_85986771_2?ie=UTF8&docId=1000426311&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-1&pf_rd_r=0MQ15NQYE02FHATEGYSZ&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=498194951&pf_rd_i=507846

<comment><USER2> FYI, it actually kind of works for me in Linux under Wine.

Installation worked perfectly for me. The only problem is that all of the text in the main application does not display (missing font?). But by clicking on random buttons, you can find books you've already bought. The text for the books displays fine, but again you can only see some fonts:

bookmark font works (you can browse bookmarks you've made) But table of contents, searching does not work so well because their font doesn't display).

<comment><USER3> Yeah I just tried it too (Ubuntu 9.10, wine 1.0.1) and had the same result -- app seems to work (i.e., I can click around, pull up my books, read them), but none of the UI text appears.

Is there a way to inspect what font/typeface the app is expecting to load?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> When's the Mac version due?

</comment><comment><USER5> Sadly, like the iPhone application, this doesn't work for magazines purchased through the Kindle store. Not sure why they're restricting the non-device applications to books only.

</comment><comment><USER6> Wonderful! My stupid first-gen EEE pc with XP finally has a use other than coffee cup coaster (Because it gets so damn hot it can keep my coffee warm.)

On another note, Amazon apparently just gave me a free Kindle. Sweet. Does this mean that they actually had no intention of making money on the device itself, it was all about selling books without having to stock and ship them?

</comment><comment><USER7> More broadly, a software store with automatic updates on the Windows-PC platform could be huge.

<comment><USER8> It would be wonderful for software developers (if it got traction) but there is no reason why it is helpful for software _customers_.

Nobody wakes up in the morning and says "You know what I need? An App Store on my machine, to help shareware developers sell more software to me!"

(P.S. It has worked wonderfully for Steam though, and wonderfully but less famously for one or two other game distribution networks like Stardock. They all give value adds for installing the "store" system -- priority distribution of games, deeply discounted games, and kinder friendlier DRM being three of the big ones.)

<comment><USER7> One of the things I really like about Ubuntu is that I can download and install the right version of a wide variety of program for my machine very easily. And it lets me keep up to date without thinking about it. A lot of programs don't update automatically and those that do are doing it right when I don't want it to--when I start the program up. If there was a similar system for Windows, I would definitely consider switching back.

If developers have a good distribution system, there's greater incentive to invest more in making better software. There's a chicken-and-egg problem here since unless the platform has worthwhile programs, no one is going to install it, but Steam is one example, and Microsoft could do it themselves and that would guaranteed to be adopted, if there's no legal problems there.

Distributing free programs (How about keep my Python and Notepad++ up to date?) would be a way to bootstrap as well.

EDIT: Firefox Add-ons also looks like it's moving towards a store with donations as a preliminary trial, and remember add-ons can also be standalone applications running off of xulrunner: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=892073>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Awesome - I just uploaded a new ebook to Amazon and was going to have to borrow a friend's Kindle to see what it looked like.

<comment><USER10> What's the title of your book ?

<comment><USER11> I'm going to assume that he's talking about "How to Become a C# Programmer" <http://bit.ly/2OlHRI>, unless he's published multiple ebooks within the last week.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Great! - this is a move in the right direction. I'm really hoping for a web version.

<comment><USER10> Not to be snarky, by why do a mac, a PC and a web version even make sense ?

Isn't the whole point of the kindle that you can use it as a book ?

<comment><USER13> I leave my kindle at home most of the time. Sometimes, while at work, I wish I could take a look at a particular passage of a book. The iphone app is OK for waiting rooms, but is definitely not ideal for more than casual reading. Having a mac version would be very helpful for me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Just a note... It appears the installer is Nullsoft's NSIS system.</comment>


How college workers use loophole to boost pay - <AUTHOR> http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/PrintStory.pl?document_id=2012217904&zsection_id=2003904401&slug=retirerehire27m&date=20100626

<comment><USER2> So if they were in a defined contribution plan (as in the "other plan" mentioned in the article), they'd be able to draw on the money in that plan by this point in their lives yet still work.

I'm not sure this is even morally questionable.

Sure, the state of Washington may have underfunded their retirement plan, but that's poor planning, not necessarily these guys' problem.

Couple this with the fact their defined contribution plan didn't exist for most of these people when hired, I _really_ don't see that this is a moral problem. Sure, the state may wish to change the law to make it harder to do, but that's just changing the law to make it easier to fund the pension, it's not a morality issue.

</comment><comment><USER3> Double Dipping is a menace on tax payer dollars as well.

The same thing happens with Fire departments, Police Departments, Elected and City workers. Its a complete mess and a huge waste on tax payer dollars. You would be UTTERLY surprised how much of YOUR money goes into schemes like this.

We are not talking small dollars here either. For every Firefighter that does this, we are talking over $200k over the course of the life of the pension. Now multiply that by how many people that actually do this in one city. And its not just the cities. Its the Counties and state officials as well. Its a horrible thing they do, but they get away with it because there are no local checks and balances. People(citizens) just don't care...

And don't think that this doesn't happen in your city or your county. It happens EVERYWHERE.

<comment><USER4> What's the difference between retiring and taking a job elsewhere and retiring and taking the same job? If these people want to keep working to make additional money on top of their pension payout that is their choice. The bottom line is that the pension draw is going to happen after they've been working for 30 years.

The only scheming I see is the possibility of circumventing state mandated hiring practices to not have to compete for their old jobs back.

What is really broken, in my opinion, isn't the double-dipping as much as the system that makes double-dipping a drain on the public good. If instead of a pension the money was drawn from a 401k would we have the same feelings against this behavior?

Edit: Tried to clarify/stay focused.

<comment><USER3> Its not just the old jobs back. They do this because they know its possible and allowed.

Lets say your out in the work force. Work for 20 years and decide to retire. You don't get your pension until you turn 65 in the U.S. These double dippers start their pension right away. So they are collecting on the pension while they get rehired. Government pension usually does not stop paying out when you decide to go back to work in your mid 40's. They pay you even if you took the same exact job back. So not only is a official getting paid their current salary, they are also getting paid their pension on top of that and they are only 40. When they go another 20 years and retire, their pension doubles. And if they are alive for the next 40 years after, we as tax payers are paying double their salary.

Its immoral.

<comment><USER5> With the exception of these higher-level executive positions, the state gets workers on the cheap for those 20 years. My student interns graduate making 1.5 to 2x what I make per year. Seriously, are you gonna do Oracle DBA duties for $50k a year at a university or $100k a year in industry?

Taxpayers don't want to pay high state salaries, even though they end up doing so with the pensions.

And I'm one of those burdened taxpayers too. I have to pay state taxes at my state job :) So I literally pay part of my own salary.

I choose to work here for lower pay. But I have a _great_ job that I love. There's no better reward than teaching people to program. Not everyone's in that same boat. And I won't lie - if the opportunity presented itself for me to retire, keep my pension, and come back to work, I don't think I'd feel too bad about it.

Can you honestly say you wouldn't do the same?

<comment><USER6> _Seriously, are you gonna do Oracle DBA duties for $50k a year at a university or $100k a year in industry?_

In my experience, the administrators making $50k in academia would be making precisely $0 in industry. Unlike academia, industry cares about getting things done.

<comment><USER5> In my experience, "getting stuff done" in the academic world isn't about making money for the business owner. It's about teaching students. So I think your statement is a little unfair. Network admins, DBAs, and developers have to keep the infrastructure working so people can teach, and students can learn.

Try explaining to a student that you lost her transcripts, or explain to the government how someone got in and got 10,000 SSNs from your database.

The challenges are the same. But it's a lot harder when you can't hire the DBAs who know how to stop that kind of stuff cos you can only pay $50,000.

And there's no shortage of under-qualified IT "professionals" in industry. If you've ever done code audits for others, like I have, you know what I'm talking about.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Hrm, "workers" seems like the wrong word here. They're basically executives (going by their titles). Also, I work at a university and my pay hasn't changed for three years...probably because of stuff like this.

<comment><USER8> I suspect this works best in an environment where your responsibilities are murky at best -- it's a bull market in educations, charge whatever you want and enrollment goes up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This happens all the time at my alma mater. It's very frustrating to see almost one third of the tenured faculty positions in a department held by guys that retired years ago while new PhD grads are fighting 100-to-1 odds to get a tenure track job. It really cripples innovation and steers good people out of academia.

</comment><comment><USER10> So why are they getting this pension before they're 65 (or whatever the retirement age is there) in the first place?

</comment><comment><USER11> I was hoping "loophole" was a new programming language I could start learning.

<comment><USER12> And I was thinking "college workers" meant student employees. I admit that I was looking for a way to boost my own income ...</comment></comment>


Screaming Channels: Radio Side-Channels in Mixed-Signal Chips - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/eurecom-s3/screaming_channels <comment><USER2> Indeed: "Finally, chips implementing other widespread protocols (e.g., 4G/LTE, RFID) need to be inspected to determine whether they are vulnerable to screaming channel attacks."</comment>


Ask HN: What are good learning resources for Natural Language Processing? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I've been reading through this online course by Dan Jurafsky [0] which includes chapters of his new upcoming book.

[0]: [http://web.stanford.edu/class/cs124/](http://web.stanford.edu/class/cs124/)

</comment><comment><USER3> This would be a good place to start [https://www.coursera.org/course/nlp](https://www.coursera.org/course/nlp)</comment>


MIT IQ: The MIT Intelligence Quest - <AUTHOR> http://iq.mit.edu/ <comment><USER2> MIT is in the process of converting its brand's value into money. It's interesting, because the brand is so strong that they probably can announce even more stupid "quests" and "initiatives" and "labs" (like the IBM "collaboration") to extract value from industry without seriously harming the quality of the students who apply. But as a current student it's kind of heartbreaking. This place has been so special for so long. But even MIT cannot hold out against the corporate cancer that's been spreading through higher education for the last twenty years.

EDIT: just wanted to add, I'd love to ask the marketing team behind this site how they came up with _quest_. What the fuck is a quest, and how is it different than all of these researchers just doing whatever they wanted, anyway? MIT isn't funding these labs directly in most cases and the work has been ongoing, it's just a branding exercise.

<comment><USER3> Colleges are businesses that deal in information and knowledge for money.

<comment><USER4> Colleges are businesses that provide a signal of competence, and a network of peers who also want that signal, in exchange for money.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is the high water mark, the summer solstice if you will, of the current wave.

Buckle up, Serious People are going to rediscover the fundamental Hard Problems and relocate the current Hot Topics into their appropriate ontologies.

<comment><USER6> What is some evidence or reasoning that we are reaching certain hard limits as you mentioned?

<comment><USER7> For example, machine translation from one human language to another has been acclaimed as one of the big success areas in deep learning. But when one looks deeper, there be dragons...

[https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/01/the-s...](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/01/the- shallowness-of-google-translate/551570/)

<comment><USER8> Oh wow. That's Douglas Hofstadter in great form. Could you please submit that to HN so it has a chance to get to the fist page?

<comment><USER8> Never mind- there's already a conversation. Thanks for posting anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> MIT is also giving the course Artificial General Intelligence at [https://agi.mit.edu/](https://agi.mit.edu/) List of recommended articles and papers (reading material for the AGI course): [https://agi.mit.edu/vote- ai/](https://agi.mit.edu/vote-ai/)

</comment><comment><USER10> Sounds like they are solving the exodus of brains to Industry by effectively creating Industry-funded departments located on campus. "You will be an MIT employee, fully funded by Google."

<comment><USER11> Near the bottom of the page:

> A key to the success of MIT IQ will be identifying industry allies who share > our passion for tackling big, real-world problems. That work is already > underway: we have forged a number of collaborative projects with industry, > such as the MIT–IBM Watson AI Lab.

However, the biggest incentive to go into industry is income. Sure, your research and your department can do more with more funding but wouldn't you still make about the same amount as a grad/research scientist/professor?

<comment><USER12> Maybe Google pays more than average for these positions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Related:

UC Berkeley launches Center for Human-Compatible Artificial Intelligence

[http://news.berkeley.edu/2016/08/29/center-for-human- compati...](http://news.berkeley.edu/2016/08/29/center-for-human-compatible- artificial-intelligence/)

[http://humancompatible.ai/](http://humancompatible.ai/)

</comment><comment><USER13> > And today, by tapping the united strength of these and other interlocking > fields and capitalizing on what they can teach each other, we seek to answer > the deepest questions about intelligence — and to deliver transformative new > gifts for humankind.

Ugh, this kind of corporate-speak is nauseating. Can anyone understand what this "quest" actually entails?

</comment><comment><USER14> Understanding the recipie and salient ingredients by which nature generates intelligence so that we can build a theory of intelligence is long overdue but they're starting at too high of a level. We don't have a good model for artificial neurogenesis that allows us to create complex AI from a simpler set of building blocks, we don't have a genotype-to-phenotype mapping or a generic representation to encode complex phenotypes in a mathematical genetic abstraction, we don't have an abstraction by which mutation can create open ended phenotypic variation, we don't have a model for artificial evolution to drive the evolution of novelty.

If we want to solve this problem we're going to have to reverse engineer intelligence. Otherwise we're just going to continue to run into walls by trying to either brute force our way from the ground up and by ignore lessons from biological intelligence or philosophize from the top down.

<comment><USER15> What is the "problem?" Depending on what you're trying to solve, you don't need to go as low level as possible — it's likely a mistake as to try and model the universe is a futile exercise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I don't think connected neural ensembles made from a deep learning architecture can scale to what we would call general artificial intelligence.

At least not with decades of manual supervision.

</comment><comment><USER17> For some reason I read it as "the MIT intelligence test", and was confused.

</comment><comment><USER18> I respect what they are doing but I disagree with the methods. Intelligence could be one of those kind of things that is very hard to engineer directly. And we'd have more success if we inspected the underlying processes and then simulated those.

I've posted this before but here is my proposal: [https://scrollto.com/life-a- universe-simulation/](https://scrollto.com/life-a-universe-simulation/)

What I propose is a minimum viable digital environment that can support the creation of self-organized turing machines that feed off their environment. What this really means is, coming up with a digital environment that can support the evolutionary process. Evolution requires vast space, vast time (in this case -- clock cycles), and principles that allow for both storage and movement of information. The storage and movement of information is accomplished most simply by roughly emulating mass/energy conservation/conversion laws that we have in our universe. With just collisions that form stationary quasiparticles, and can also annihilate to reform the moving fundamental particles, universal computation is enabled.

Toffoli and Fredkin discovered the power of collision-based computing decades ago. There is a lot of literature and good results they derived on the power of these types of systems.

Let's create life the only way we know it formed -- evolution. It's far more elegant and less engineered than trying to unravel how chaos formed competitive results on a million-deep evolutionary ancestor tree.

<comment><USER19> Make sure you cull the programs that might end up escaping the sim and destroying all humans.

<comment><USER18> If they figure out how to escape I think I'll let them have it.</comment></comment></comment>


Study Finds That Many Don't Wash After Using Public Restrooms - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/14/us/14hands.html <comment><USER2> I always mean to wash my hands, but I'm usually distracted with thoughts about what ingredients I forgot to put in your meal. Shame on my forgetfulness.

</comment><comment><USER3> Sometimes it seems like your hands will just get dirtier after washing.

</comment><comment><USER4> If anything, the numbers they cite for those who do are higher than my anecdotal observation.</comment>


Why I decided to travel 9761 miles for a 5 minute pitch - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/on-startups/b43aa7230eb5

<comment><USER2> Nice story. Sometimes you just have to go all in. Wish you all the best!</comment>


Pulse: open, trustworthy, decentralised sync and cloud service - <AUTHOR> https://ind.ie/pulse/ <comment><USER2> Pulse is either a rebranding or a fork of Syncthing. I'm not quite sure yet.

I just implemented Syncthing on a cluster of front-end web servers. I know best practice would be using hooks to make all my web servers update from a Git repository, but I prefer to do dev on one server and then just update one production server when I go live. Syncthing simply replicates the right directories to the rest of the front-end servers.

I have 8 static asset web servers that run on low-end VPS's with just 256 megs of memory. Syncthing only consumes about 15 megs of that precious memory, leaving plenty for Nginx.

Syncthing is competing with BTSync. BTSync has the disadvantage of being a closed-source product, but it's far easier to setup and configure. Syncthing will take a bit of configuration to get everything just right. It also comes as a plain binary without a native way to make it a system daemon. You have to come up with your own init.d, move config files to a shared directory, set the right permissions on that config file directory, etc.

BTSync is also a lot easier when it comes to adding shared folders. With their system, you share a folder on one computer and receive a key and a secret. On other computers, you simply pick an empty folder, enter the key and secret, and then everything synchronizes.

With SyncThing, you have to configure the relationship on all sides of the connection. When you start setting up a big mesh of dozens of machines, this gets very very tedious and you find yourself just picking one machine to be the "master" and pointing each machine to that one master. This has the downside of not being able to source pieces of the replication from all of the various servers.

<comment><USER3> The first sentence on the page:

>Syncthing is becoming Ind.ie Pulse

would indicate it's a rebranding, but I see no evidence on the Syncthing side of things that this is the case

<comment><USER4> The evidence is here: [https://discourse.syncthing.net/t/introducing-pulse- and-ind-...](https://discourse.syncthing.net/t/introducing-pulse-and-ind- ie/1074)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> A description of the relationship between Pulse and Syncthing is here: [https://discourse.syncthing.net/t/introducing-pulse-and- ind-...](https://discourse.syncthing.net/t/introducing-pulse-and-ind-ie/1074)

It appears to be a valid rebranding of the project from the developers, who are interested in extending their desire somehow to a privacy-centered phone OS? Seems like quite a big pivot.

<comment><USER5> The phone idea already existed before. This is an alignment of previously separate projects, I think, not a pivot of one project.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> According to their "Team" page [1], ind.ie has three designers, one person for operations and a single developer.

With that team, they want to create free versions of Dropbox (Indie Pulse), Android/iOS (Indie Phone), Facebook (Heartbeat)?

Love the idea and intentions, so I hope they get good support on their open- source projects.

[1] [https://ind.ie/team/](https://ind.ie/team/)

</comment><comment><USER7> I keep hearing that Syncthing (Pulse) is just like BTSync, except you set it up manually, and that the developers don't have any plans to add peer discovery.

But peer discovery is the _whole point_ of BTSync. Sure, Syncthing/Pulse is an improvement over rsync, but only an incremental one. BTSync, with its peer discovery, is a radical improvement.

Even having a roadmap for peer discovery would make me a lot more interested in it. As it is, no thanks, I have better things to do than maintain N^2 configuration problems.

<comment><USER8> BTSync is a radical improvement in the network protocols but I still can't get the btsync web ui to change my password. You could say that their priorities are in the right place for an open source project, which they are not. Don't get me wrong, I love the concept and most of the implementation of btsync. But they are holding themselves back, leaving an opportunity for projects like Pulse. That said, Pulse is dead in the water without peer-discovery. How do I connect to a peer with Pulse if there is no central server?

<comment><USER9> I suspect that you have specified a password in your BitTorrent Sync configuration file. Settings set in the configuration file will override settings set through the WebUI (after restart). Consider specifying your password either in the configuration file or using the WebUI, but not both.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm a bit worried that, as far as I see, the Syncthing protocol doesn't really allow having servers/peers that don't see plain-text. (Since I think it mostly just uses TLS to keep things secret from eavesdroppers.) I've always been looking for an open source Dropbox-like that allows having storage that only sees ciphertext (despite the fact that it would require a little key management from the user, which I think is a usability challenge, but one that can be overcome).

<comment><USER9> BitTorrent Sync has functionality for generating "encrypted secrets" using the developer API. It is possible to deliver a secret key to a peer which only allows for that peer to access encrypted versions of the folder content.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> That's such a non-descript name, I don't think this is a good move. Syncthing is great, it's a thing to sync things. Dropbox, the box where you drop files into. BTSync uses BT to sync things. Pulse? Uhm, maybe it's something about heartbeats or social media analysis?

</comment><comment><USER12> Recently set up Syncthing on Raspberry Pi, N900 and Win7 laptop for the 'perfect' synchronised notes (mainly notes, anyway) system. Can also report low enough resource usage to be useful on these systems. The phone battery life is not significantly affected and the Pi continues to play media, run Tmux and perform backups without hesitation.

Memory use is consistently under 15 MB and CPU use in the low single % figures. I am only syncing my notes, for the most part, but it fits the bill perfectly.

Excited to see where the project goes from here, having just read about the Indie team's phone project in Linux Voice recently.</comment>


Passwords tangled in Fifth Amendment - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.com/blog/identity/passwords-tangled-in-fifth-amendment/131 <comment><USER2> This is an interesting question and I look forward to its ultimate resolution.

Personally speaking, I don't believe she should have to reveal the password because I don't believe defendants should be required to assist the government in prosecuting them.</comment>


Post.fm - Email Reinvented - <AUTHOR> http://post.fm

<comment><USER2> I recently read on Quora that reinventing email or making email a thing of the past is among the startup ideas that persistently fail.

"The first truly social email service." Is email something social? I'm not sure of that.

And here we don't even know what the service is. Will I get an email address? Will it be compatible with the normal email? Is it another Facebook Message?

I don't see why people would request an invite and _give post.fm their email address_ if they don't know what to expect.

<comment><USER3> > Is email something social? I'm not sure of that.

Of course email is social. It's used by people to communicate with other people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Even a little description about what the service does, would help tremendously to get my email address.

</comment><comment><USER5> OP left this comment 321 days ago.

"An open / distributed alternative. Facebook today is like some initial proprietary version of email. Sooner or later, an open standard protocol for "sharing" and "social networking" (EMAIL + FOAF?) will take over. (And it has to be distributed, like email) That's what we're building at the mo :)"

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1466023>

</comment><comment><USER6> If I didn't have an email address, and Post.fm claims to re-invent email, and yet Post.fm requires an email address, does my head explode when I try to connect the dots?

At some point obscurity stops being cool. I think I reached this point just before I left high school.

</comment><comment><USER7> After submitting it says "Like us on Facebook to get priority access". I'm not sure what it is yet :/

Is this a dark pattern emerging?

</comment><comment><USER8> I don't have an email address and this is not helping</comment>


Learning to write a compiler - <AUTHOR> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1669/learning-to-write-a-compiler

<comment><USER2> Are we still recommending the Dragon Book? I have a copy on my desk, but I got a lot more out of Modern Compiler Implementation in ML, I felt. The Dragon Book covers a lot of ground, but I don't think it really goes far enough towards being able to construct a real production-quality compiler, whereas Modern Compiler Implementation is more focused, but gets you a lot further towards being able to write real compilers.

Just my two cents. Perhaps other people have read the Dragon book and got a lot out of it. I've found it much more useful as a reference work (when looking for specific information), rather than as something that one might read from cover-to-cover in order to learn how to write compilers.</comment>


Show HN: Markdown Style Guide - <AUTHOR> http://www.cirosantilli.com/markdown-style-guide

<comment><AUTHOR> I'd love any kind of feedback. For more "precise", "well defined" issues, I propose that you open an issue at: [https://github.com/cirosantilli/markdown- style-guide/issues](https://github.com/cirosantilli/markdown-style- guide/issues) as it is more manageable.

</comment><comment><USER2> I don't get the point of ignoring definition lists for your reason. The ones you proposed are ugly.

If definition lists aren't supported then it's an inferior breed of markdown and should be discontinued where possible</comment>


Google Analytics Real-time - quick review - <AUTHOR> http://matjaz.posterous.com/google-analytics-real-time-quick-review

<comment><USER2> Chartbeat clone, but they can't afford to give it away for free.</comment>


An open letter to Eric Schmidt from Mathias Döpfner, CEO of Axel Springer  - <AUTHOR> http://futureofthebook.org/blog/2014/04/23/letter-from-mathias-dopfner-ceo-of-axel-springer/ <comment><USER3> It's always funny when you see old masters of the universe become Marxists when someone is about to eat their lunch. Doubly so when it is a business that has spent the better part of two centuries appropriating the public space into a private one through ever increasing copyrights. Now they run across someone who does it better than they could ever dream of. And all of a sudden the forms of IP that Google uses to corner the market from publishers are in huge need of public debate. One these people will cover in a neutral and even handed way in their own publications. But what's not up for debate are the bits of IP like they paywalling publicly funded research for a century or more.

I'll take out my magnifying glass to look for my violin.

<comment><USER4> Very good point.

Döpfner's position is truly schizophrenic. He admires Google's success as a business, states that his news sites depend on the traffic Google provides (for free), but still wants the European Commission to regulate the fairness of their search results, and has lobbied the German Government to make Google pay for links to his content ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leistungsschutzrecht](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leistungsschutzrecht)). With BILD, the flagship product of his publishing house, he is in charge of the most hateful, sensationalist and ignorant mainstream news outlet in Germany, however, he claims to be concerned about the future of journalism. He likens Google's position to former state monopolists Deutsche Telekom and Deutsche Post, yet his company has never contributed to the criticism of the monopoly power of those German companies. And finally, he's worried about privacy, while violating people's privacy has been, for decades, BILD's core journalistic principle.

Döpfner's publishing house striving to become Europe's leading digital media company is a hilarious, sad and frightening thing to imagine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Here is some context on the relationship between Mathias Döpfner, Axel Springer and Google.

Axel Springer Verlag successfully lobbied the German government to write a law that creates a "Leistungsschutzrecht für Presseverleger", which extends German copyright to include "whatever publishers do". This new copyright extension in essence makes it possible for a publisher to extract money from people that link to their content (which they previously put on the internet for everybody to see!).

Here in Germany, it is considered a "lex Google", since they didn't really manage to hide that the whole purpose of this law is to make Google pay Axel Springer money for linking to Springer content in Google News.

Do you think this is weird, counterintuitive and generally damaging to the Internet? That's the context needed to understand things coming out of Döpfners mouth/keyboard.

<comment><USER6> Döpfner is trying to pivot the Axel Springer publishing house into a digital media company but their efforts are laughable. They sold some of their newspapers and magazines and are investing the money in dotcoms, but compared to Google or even Yahoo they're just small fish. They're clueless about technology so they resort to whining about the oh-so-evil Google.

For a quick laugh, watch this video of a tourist trip to Silicon Valley they did last year: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ug4Rcip9SHg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ug4Rcip9SHg)

<comment><USER7> I understand about 3 words of German and I found that video fascinating. Like Russians from 1970 touring a Western supermarket or something.

<comment><USER4> Yes, you got the essence of it.

I understand more than 3 words of German, and the money quote, by Döpfner, appears at the 6 minute mark:

"What I would hope... that we do not try now to play from now on the cliché of a super cool Silicon Valley guy [laughter]. Let's really keep some sort of decent German spiessertum."

The term "Spiessertum", and the German "Spiessbürger", refer to people with a particularly narrow-minded mindset, determined by extreme conformism and opposition to change.

<comment><USER7> That word is great. I notice Google translates Spiessbürger as "philistine," which gets the conformity aspect, but doesn't capture the resistance to change. In English, stick-in-the-mud ("spiess" means stick, but the etymology of Spiessbürger is older than this) or fuddy-duddy capture some of this part of the meaning.

"Babbit" or "Babbitry" may be the closest English terms to capturing the whole meaning.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Please. Don't allow people from that company a voice here. That abomination is mostly (in)famous for a tabloid with headlines that would ALWAYS be flagged on this site. And for bare-breasted girls on page three. And random football/soccer news.

This is 4chan, printed. I haven't encountered anything worse, ever. I cannot imagine that the person in charge of this company can write a single straight (and true) sentence.

(Disclaimer: That company is dangerously big. Funnily enough it might be the printed Google for Germany. They influence the media in gazillion ways. There ARE some more toned down parts of Axel Springer, but as a whole it's deapicable)

</comment><comment><USER9> Mr. Doepfner seems to fear Google's power. As a newspaper publisher, that is reasonable. But in a wider societal context, as he seems to be implying, it is nonsense. Google has so little political influence that the city council won't let them build a twenty-foot bridge over a creek between two Google office buildings ([http://rationalconspiracy.com/2014/04/17/money-doesnt- matter...](http://rationalconspiracy.com/2014/04/17/money-doesnt-matter-in- politics/)).

<comment><USER10> Maybe at the local level that's true, but at the Federal level, this is changing. Google used to be very politically uninvolved, but they did a 180 on that a few years back and started aggressively building a strong lobbying arm a few years back [1], hiring a high-profile ex-Congresswoman, Susan Molinari, to head it up [2]. This operation has grown to the point where in 2013 Google hit #8 on the list of corporations that spend the most lobbying Congress [3], with lobbying outlays greater than those of Comcast and Lockheed.

[1] [http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/how-google-is- transfo...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/how-google-is-transforming- power-and-politicsgoogle-once-disdainful-of-lobbying-now-a-master-of- washington- influence/2014/04/12/51648b92-b4d3-11e3-8cb6-284052554d74_story.html)

[2] [http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/03/business/susan-molinari- ad...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/03/business/susan-molinari-adds-to- googles-political-firepower.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0)

[3] [http://www.theverge.com/2013/6/4/4394234/google-eight- bigges...](http://www.theverge.com/2013/6/4/4394234/google-eight-biggest- record-lobbying-washington)

<comment><USER11> If you had as much money, would you not also spend some of it on lobbying?

I believe Google's actions were defensive in nature. I despise our politicians who will take "contributions" and ignore the people who elected them; still, if I had that much money I'd probably be lobbying too.

<comment><USER12> Aren't there companies that don't really spend a lot of money on lobbying even if they make a lot of it? Like, say Apple.

<comment><AUTHOR> [http://appleinsider.com/articles/13/05/23/apple-on-pace- to-d...](http://appleinsider.com/articles/13/05/23/apple-on-pace-to-double- lobbying-spending-over-taxes-other-issues)

I guess it depends on what you consider "a lot of money."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Axel springer is buying a lot of daily and weekly newspaper in germany sry but we should fear axel springer too...

another view on that subject: [http://www.jungewelt.de/2014/04-17/026.php?sstr=d%F6pfner](http://www.jungewelt.de/2014/04-17/026.php?sstr=d%F6pfner)

</comment><comment><USER14> The irony of this realisation that Google have changed the game completely is that it is occurring long after the horse has bolted, and so much so that it may not be entirely valid to target Google with so much venom. The reality is the SV bubble has created a way of valuing things (privacy, IP, money itself) that is not in keeping with the old world at all (being much of western Europe, NYC, LA etc.) and is just moving on regardless of their concerns, many of which I do happen to share.

Arguing the rights or wrongs of this is already too late, and the question to be asked is given the changes in the way things are valued how are you going to justify your existence in future? The very fact Google are struggling to create new revenue streams that rival their ad one shows how difficult this new game is to play, even for those that created it, and even for those apparently so dominant.

This isn't unique to SV as the other great growth area on the planet, China, has its own interesting take which bunnie called gongkai: [http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?cat=20](http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?cat=20)

You can only conclude that there is something holding back the old world.

If it were not obvious, regulation is going to achieve SFA, and the only way to change the system is going to be to play it in such a way you get to pick the rules. That used to be quietly whispering in the ears of authority, but that is clearly no longer as effective as Mr Döpfner would like.

<comment><USER11> Try not to use acronyms; it's jarring to have to pause, go look up "Sweet Fuck All," and resume.

Thanks though, for pointing out that Google is choosing to pour their efforts into finding new areas of profit outside search. Obviously they could have pursued regulatory capture instead, but so far it seems they're staying white hat.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> It's interesting that he admits his company rely on Google's search traffic (while criticising them for showing any of their content, but I digress) - <USER2> criticises them for algorithmic changes that don't benefit his company (fair enough), then decries the idea that competitors pay for some new advertising spot. So the attitude here is against paying?

But later he looks at Google's free services and claims that they're not free since they use a behavioral currency (fair enough, they collect lots of data of course) - and maybe it would be "better and cheaper" to use normal money. So, we should be paying for services? Hmm. Not a completely equal comparison, maybe they should be at the top of Google for whatever terms.. but it seems odd to preach that I should pay for convenient services and they shouldn't for the majority of their traffic.

I do agree with a lot of what he says, but I use Google services and find them helpful.

Perhaps the fundamental issue here is that this is a big media company and they want transparency into Google's algorithms. What's a media company going to do with that? My guess is optimise their pages to abuse the algorithms and dominate the search rankings. Great for them, judging by most media outlets, terrible for the search user. I think I'd rather Google have a secret algorithm than have my search results dominated by whoever can abuse a known algorithm the most - especially because media companies I'd rather not hear from (not necessarily Axel Springer) and scammers are among those with the means to do so.

</comment><comment><USER16> It's going to be a lot harder to maintain an open, global internet without the moral legitimacy that derives from liberalism. If the internet is just going to be a means to make states and criminals more capable of predating upon ordinary people, then ordinary people will abandon it in a panic (or submit to it meekly, and only use it carefully).

The thought that this can be reversed with mere lobbying is a little ridiculous. We have to build more secure computing and telecom infrastructure, or we will see a massive reversal in behavior. It does not matter how many 'internet of things' advertisements that CISCO buys if the general social opinion is that adopting the technology will make you vulnerable to governmental and criminal predation.

This letter is an example of some of the backlash that we can expect as this patina of moral legitimacy washes off. A congressional committee (like the Church committee) will not be sufficient to restore international trust, and neither would a new president making promises. Google's business model rests on trust, which is always harder to earn back than it is to gain in the first place.

</comment><comment><USER17> Original link to English translation [http://www.faz.net/aktuell/feuilleton/debatten/mathias- doepf...](http://www.faz.net/aktuell/feuilleton/debatten/mathias-doepfner-s- open-letter-to-eric-schmidt-12900860.html?printPagedArticle=true)

Original link to German source [http://www.faz.net/aktuell/feuilleton/medien/mathias- doepfne...](http://www.faz.net/aktuell/feuilleton/medien/mathias-doepfner- warum-wir-google-fuerchten-12897463.html?printPagedArticle=true)

</comment><comment><USER18> I've worked with publishing houses, and boy, if there's an industry that's more conservative, I don't even want to know...

And no, this was in the US/UK. Although I wouldn't be surprised if the Germans would be even worse, considering that they're equally consolidated, even more snooty (even harder boundaries between genre and "serious" literature) and then there's the whole fixed book price deal...

</comment><comment><USER19> It's hard for journals to compete on content aggregation now that there are automated services where users can do the job themselves (hello HN).

One thing that was the Internet doesn't do well is investigation. Maybe journals should try to look into ways of getting funding for specific affairs. Get subscribers to pay for specific topics like the NSA leaks. I know I would be ready to pay for that.

</comment><comment><USER20> Welcome to the bizarre thought that percolates through the ultra-rich. I suspect the ongoing leveling process of the internet will make more of this visible over time. "Let them eat cake."

</comment><comment><USER21> If Mathias Döpfner is so worried about Google, then running Google Analytics across all his newspaper sites (Bild, Welt etc) probably isn't the smartest move.

<comment><USER4> Can you provide some evidence that he does that?

I'm pretty certain that Döpfner composed his critique of privacy violations (with a strange emphasis on cookies) while being logged in to Google+, Facebook and whatnot -- but using Google analytics for his online properties would put him on a completely different level of hypocrisy.

EDIT: You're correct. Here's the link: [http://www.axelspringer.de/artikel/Hinweise-zum- Datenschutz_...](http://www.axelspringer.de/artikel/Hinweise-zum- Datenschutz_40410.html)

<comment><USER21> I checked a few of Axel Springer's domains before posting that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Wasn't this part of a movie, Baader Meinhof Complex or something?

<comment><USER23> You mean the Axel Springer company? Yes, and not only a movie. One of their businesses is the publication of germanys "BILD" newspaper which became a bit more moderate in recent decades but was among the main enemies of the left- wing students movement during the 60ies and 70ies from which the terrorist RAF, the subject of the movie, spawned.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> "Never pick a fight with people who buy ink by the barrel."

Is this a turning point? Sure Google has clout and they're trying to buy as much government protection [http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/how-google- is-transfo...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/how-google-is- transforming-power-and-politicsgoogle-once-disdainful-of-lobbying-now-a- master-of-washington- influence/2014/04/12/51648b92-b4d3-11e3-8cb6-284052554d74_story.html) as possible but the press does this for a living.

<comment><USER25> It's funny that your archaic quote undermines your point.

<comment><USER26> Talking about ink isn't funnier than talking about digging under a foundation ("undermine"). I think we all know what both of you mean, with your non- literal, colorful expressions. :)

GP makes a good point. Google is a de facto monopoly, no less than Microsoft was. Even if you stipulate that Google got there through nicer tactics than Microsoft, the end result is a similar huge concentration of power. We can laugh at old school publishers feeling disoriented. We can feel comfortable that Google won't use their power for "evil". Maybe that's a safe assumption for the near future.

I think ultimately the most reassuring thing isn't Google's intentions, but the inevitability that they too will hand the reins to someone new. Maybe Amazon. Maybe a company that most of us have never heard of yet. (And during that transition the world will become more uncertain and more interesting again, for awhile.) But meanwhile Google has a huge amount of power, and healthy skepticism is fair.

<comment><USER24> He thinks that Google is on "our side." Sire they were, when it convenient to their bottom line. Now, on commercial queries all above fold is paid links, not what's "best for the user."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> There will be people who will read this, agree with every word, and still make excuses so they can use Google everyday and not change.</comment>


Ask HN: Google copying website data to SERP. What can I do? - <AUTHOR>

I run a food blogging platform and yesterday a blogger pointed out Google SERP showing recipes in context [1]. Technically recipes aren't copyrightable but Google resorting to this will have a significant effect on search engine referral traffic. I think complaints will only end up in demoted ranking.<p>HNers, what can I do here?
For context, Here's Matt Cutt's question that led to an outrage [2]<p>[1] http://d.pr/i/13mGj<p>[2] https://twitter.com/danbarker/status/439125570115223552 <comment><USER2> Just taking a quick look it appears you need to add a description tag to tell Google what you want displayed in the SERP.

<meta name="description" content="A description of the page" />

[https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/79812?hl=en](https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/79812?hl=en)

Just taking a quick look at your source code I don't see one (at least for the particular page in your screenshot).

If you don't provide a description Google pulls text from your page it things is most relevant or would be most useful to searches.

I would test out adding a description to that page and I expect that would be displayed in the SERP after a crawl/few days.

Hope that fixes your issue.

Nice ranking in the SERP by the way.

</comment><comment><USER3> "Outrage." Uhh yeah, sure, ok.

Google have had rich snippets for years (at least 2011). You can manage them in WebMaster Tools if you don't want them for your properties. Here's some links:

[https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/146645?hl=en](https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/146645?hl=en)

[https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/173379?hl=en](https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/173379?hl=en)

[https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/99170?hl=en](https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/99170?hl=en)

It is a little unfortunate that it is opt-out rather than opt-in, but unfortunately a lot of sites don't give SEO enough attention and as a result the functionality would rarely work.

<comment><USER4> His SERP snippet doesn't seem to be a rich snippet (except for the 372 cal, maybe).

<comment><AUTHOR> Our recipes are in microdata format

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > Technically recipes aren't copyrightable

Per the US Copyright Office [0], that's true insofar as a "recipe" is a "mere listing of ingredients" (which is _not_ what Google is showing), but not necessarily true beyond that.

[0] [http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl122.html](http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl122.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Precisely the point. They are showing the steps too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> > Technically recipes aren't copyrightable but Google resorting to this will > have a significant effect on search engine referral traffic. I think > complaints will only end up in demoted ranking.

Not technically, actually. You can't copyright recipes. Your options are:

* Live with it

* Noindex and live with your site not being indexed by Google.

</comment><comment><USER7> It sounds like you are getting rich snippets based upon your use of microdata as described by the following Google help page:

[https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/173379?hl=en](https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/173379?hl=en)

</comment><comment><USER4> Well, an extreme "solution" would be to noindex the site.

However, I noticed that your meta descriptions are really long. Maybe you should try to shorten them and hope that Google shows them instead.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is not restricted to me, but a lot of food bloggers who are not on my platform.</comment></comment>